Real Life Practice

It’s not about balance anymore.

To borrow a phrase from Dorothy, “Toto, it’s not about work-life balance anymore.” It’s really all about work-life blending. The way of work for attorneys, as for other professionals, has changed profoundly in recent years. And the changes will just keep coming. The reality is that the gadgets that are touted to give us freedom have become invisible chains keeping us linked to the office 24/7.

The goal is to find a way to work that fits how and where you work best. If that means answering email from home first thing in the morning before you go for a run or a swim, just do it. Use technology to truly free yourself from the office. I know this is radical thinking for lawyers, but to borrow another phrase . . . “The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.” Take that step today. Start blending your work and your life into one harmonious whole.

Integration not disintegration.

Much of the stress so many attorneys feel in the day-to-day practice comes from what Steven Keeva, author of Transforming Practices, refers to as disintegration. The key to creating a law practice that serves your life – instead of a life that serves your law practice – is to integrate the two. According to Keeva, signs of disintegration include:- Feeling like you don’t know yourself- Feeling like your life is living you, rather than vice versa- You don’t really feel aware of what’s going on around you- You feel out of control of your life- You rarely, if ever, take time to reflect on the big questions- You exhibit some type of obsessive behavior. If you recognize any of these signs, you may want to begin to find ways to create a new way of practicing law and running your law practice. By creating a meaningful inner life, you will nourish your professional life, “so that what you do becomes more of an expression of who you are.”

While such thinking may seem very “new age” to many attorneys, it is not. Oliver Wendell Holmes gave similar advice many years ago in a letter to a young man just starting his legal career: “For your sake I hope that when your work seems to present only mean details, you may realize that every detail has the mystery of the universe behind it and may keep your heart with an undying faith.”

Almost New Year’s Eve.

It’s almost New Year’s Eve – the “rolling of the year,” as Charles Dickens referred to it in A Christmas Carol. As I think about all that’s in store in the coming year, I like to reflect upon one of my favorite lines from a song called The Hard Way, by Mary Chapin Carpenter.

“We’ve got two lives, one we’re given and the other one we make.”

True. True. What will you make of your life in 2007? Make it everything you want it to be.

Happy New Year!

I love the wintertime.

Frost upon the window. Cocoa in the morning. Bundling up to meet the day. So cold and fine. I love the wintertime.

These are lyrics from the first song I ever wrote, many years ago. Yes, music has been a part of my life for most of my life. This song still speaks to me of the beauty of the season. I hope you will find time to discover your own beauty and meaning this Holiday Season.

Something to think about.

The following quote sits in a frame in my office. As we get ready for the holiday season to begin, this quote is a wonderful reminder of what is truly important.

The definition of success — To laugh much; to win respect of intelligent persons and the affections of children; to earn the approbation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give of one’s self; to leave the world a little better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm, and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived — this is to have succeeded.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Transform your practice.

“During the last two decades, the legal profession has placed an increasingly heavy emphasis on efficiency, on working “smarter” and faster. It makes demands not only on your outer life – in constant deadlines, billable-hour quotas, pressure to keep up with a rapidly growing body of new law – but on your inner life as well. The problem is that most lawyers have never developed the resources to cope with those demands, let alone find in them the kind of meaning that can make their work more rewarding. They hear only the blare of the trumpet and miss the sonority of an orchestra that can provide resonance and depth.

To find real pleasure in the legal life, you need to open yourself to all your sources of potential meaning. You will discover that understanding a client beyond her present legal problem does not detract from the technical job at hand; it gives the technical job deeper meaning by placing it in the context of a life. Contracts, after all, are about human relationships; briefs are about disappointment, wanting to be heard, needing to heal. Seeing these deeper meanings is not a threat to good work; it enriches the experience of doing the work, engages the lawyer’s heart, and makes the end product more likely to be compelling.”

The preceding passage is from the book “Transforming Practices: Finding Joy and Satisfaction in the Legal Life,” by Steven Keeva, a senior editor of the ABA Journal. The book is enlightening, inspirational, and encouraging. It offers a new perspective on the practice of law, one that recognizes that beneath the demands of the profession, lawyers are human beings – spiritual beings. So much of that is lost in the day to day practice of law.